


Summer's End

by foxwriting



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Awkward Romance, Epilogue, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Happy Nico, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, Marshmallows, Nicknames, Nico di Angelo/Will Solace Fluff, Nico-centric, Percy Being an Idiot, Post-The Blood of Olympus (Heroes of Olympus), Sassy Nico, Terrible Jokes, What Have I Done, Will Solace is a Dork, cabin renovations gone terribly wrong, nico kind of just deserves good things, oh my god what is tagging etiquette, solangelo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2019-10-03 10:46:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17282609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxwriting/pseuds/foxwriting
Summary: It was only when the wall exploded in Will Solace’s face that he regretted helping Nico di Angelo remodel the Hades cabin.After the Giant War, cabin renovations, campfire sing-alongs, and minor uses of hypnokinesis are more than enough excitement for Nico and Will. Something of a get-together story, room for Nico to breathe and heal, and the epilogue I wanted back when Blood of Olympus first came out.





	1. WILL

**Author's Note:**

> Um well I wrote this years ago when I was an angsty teen queer and felt very betrayed that Nico didn't get a canon boyfriend and now here it is, years and years past its cultural relevance. I'd like to apologize if I made a terrible social faux-pas in my tagging or other parts of this upload, please do let me know so I can fix it. Thanks :).

**_Summer’s End_ **

 

I. 

WILL

 

It was only when the wall exploded in Will Solace’s face that he regretted helping Nico di Angelo remodel the Hades cabin.

Will coughed, choking on the white powder that coated him from head to toe. He rubbed at the powder on his face. “Is this—is this  _ flour _ ? Who the actual  _ Hades _ put flour in your walls?”

He didn’t get a reply because Nico was too busy choking back laughter. Will’s anger melted. Maybe, despite the mounted skulls that squirted green goo in Will’s face when he had tried to take them down, the coffin that burst into a cloud of feathers and sawdust when Nico had tried to remove its velvet lining, and now the walls exploding, just maybe the project hadn’t been a total failure.

“It’s plaster dust,” Nico managed. “I can’t believe it. These look like solid marble, but they’re filled with cheap plaster.”

“I swear, when I find out who built this cabin—“

“They’ll talk in rhyming couplets for a week? Real menacing, Solace.”

“Hey, it’s not like everyone can summon the Zombie Apocalypse whenever they feel like it— _ not _ that you’ll be doing anything like that on my watch, Death Boy.”

“Stop calling me that stupid nickname,” Nico snapped.

“You’re going to have to come up with a better comeback than that.”

“Shut up, Powderpuff.”

Will laughed.

They’d been at work on the Hades cabin all afternoon. It had all started when Will walked in to get Nico up in the morning and noticed the décor.

Looking back, maybe  _ Wow, di Angelo. I always knew you were secretly a vampire _ hadn’t been the best thing to say to the touchy demigod.

Not that Will really minded being forcefully recruited into the Grand Hades Cabin Makeover. It was pretty fair payback for forcefully recruiting Nico to help out in the infirmary—not that Will would ever admit that out loud.

That being said, he had started to reconsider after the cabin fought back.

“Goo-skulls, exploding coffins, and now the flour shower—“

“I don’t know what you were expecting when you attacked the wall.” Nico looked pointedly at the large hammer Will had borrowed from the Hephaestus cabin. The brass dial on the side of its head was set to ALMOST MAXIMUM DESTRUCTION mode.

Will drooped. “The window was too small. You need more natural light in here.”

“I don’t think I’ll have that problem any more.” Nico looked at the gaping hole Will had blasted into the cabin’s back wall. He looked out of the hole to the forest a stone’s throw away. Will followed his gaze. A bemused-looking dryad gave the two boys a wave before melting back into the trees. Black rubble and plaster dust covered every surface in the cabin, including the two demigods. Still, Will decided, even if the new “window” was big enough for Nico to walk through, at least it let in sunlight.

“An explosion would’ve been fine,” Will muttered. “An explosion of dust from inside a stone wall is just—why would anyone build a cabin like that?”

As soon as he’d asked the question, it hit him. Nico appeared to have had the same epiphany. His eyes widened, and then—

“ _ Hermes _ .” Nico looked murderous. “They picked the wrong cabin to start a war with.”

“Um,” Will said, thinking of poor Cecil. “Maybe we could hold off on the whole war idea?”

“Just like you to be a wimp. Little Miss Sunshine.”

“Hey! Who delivered a satyr baby last week?”

“You, like you’ll ever let me forget. Hermes wouldn’t have to know it was us.” Nico’s dark eyed burned with intensity and Will’s nervous system promptly short-circuited. “We could sneak in,” Nico continued. “Sprinkle centaur blood in their sleeping bags. They’d think it was the Ares cabin’s payback for stealing those land mines.”

“Have you ever patched up a camper after some idiot put centaur blood in their clothes?”

“Obviously not,” Nico said in his  _ I’m doing you a personal favour by entertaining your doctor stories _ voice.

“Well, you’ll get loads of experience if you go through with that plan. Picture acid burns with green pus and you’re halfway to how gross centaur blood injuries are.”

“Ugh.” Nico’s nose wrinkled. “Fine, I get it. Prank Hermes, get dragged around the infirmary like your little nurse.”

Will shoved a surprisingly pleasing image of Nico in scrubs out of his mind. “Come on,” he said, holding his hand out to the son of Hades. “Forget revenge. There are better things to do on a perfect sunny day like today.”

“Like trash my cabin with a hammer?”

Will decided to ignore that. “We’re going to take a break. You’ll become vitamin D deficient if you stay in here all day. Well. More deficient than you are already.”

“Was that an insult?”

“Come on, Ghost King.” Will reached out and grabbed Nico’s hand, hauling him to his feet. “Time for some fresh air and sunshine.”

 

 

The short break Will had intended turned into an afternoon at the rock-climbing wall after Nico and Will ran into Percy and Annabeth racing Piper and Jason to the top. Assuming  _ ran into _ was the right expression to describe how Percy nearly squashed them tumbling down the cliff-face after a nasty volcanic explosion.

“OW—I’m sorry—Oh, Nico! Hey, uh, bro.”

“Mmmf,” Will said from underneath the avalanche of limbs. Percy scrambled up.

“Oh, hey, Will,” Percy said. “I’m so sorry, I don’t want to just run away right after turning you into a pancake, but me and Annabeth are racing Piper and Jason, and—hey, you wanna join?”

Will struggled, his desire to smother Nico in blankets and keep him far away from exploding lava cliffs warring with the knowledge that a little fun would be good for both of them. In the end, Nico decided for them. “Is that a challenge, Jackson?”

Will and Nico might even have won if hadn’t been for Jason flying Piper out of the path of a stream of lava and to the top of the wall, an act everyone agreed was cheating. The six of them were grinning and joking as they headed back to the pavilion for dinner, clothes singed and covered in dirt. Will slung an arm around Nico, happy when Nico left it there for a moment before he pulled away and elbowed Will in the gut. Piper smiled at him and raised an eyebrow.

_ You wish, daughter of Aphrodite _ , Will thought.  _ Actually, I wish, too, but it’s not going to happen _ .

At the pavilion, most of the camp was already tucking in to plates of barbecue. Will split off from the group to join his siblings. The Greek half of the Seven—dragged over by Jason Grace—sat with Nico at the Hades table. Rules had gotten a bit lax in the aftermath of the Giant War. With the world having almost ended two weeks ago no one had the heart to tell its saviours they weren’t allowed to eat together.

“Hello, Earth to Will.”

Will blinked at the hand waving in front of his face. “Huh?”

His sister Kayla withdrew her hand and poked him in the ribs. “Something more interesting than your burger over there? You’ve been staring for, like, ten solid minutes.”

“He’s keeping di Angelo under surveillance so he can update his stalker file.” This was Austin, the second oldest in the Apollo cabin, after Kayla.

“I’m not a stalker!” Will protested.

“Sure, you’re not. You just follow the guy around all day, monitor his food intake, and keep him locked in the infirmary for days. Just saying,” he added in response to Will’s glare.

“I didn’t lock him in.”

“Seriously, Will?” Kayla said. “It had to be Nico di Angelo? I bet you couldn’t find someone at camp you had less of a chance with if you tried.”

Will tried to hide how much the comment stung, even though Kayla’s tone had been light-hearted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said convincingly.

Austin and Kayla didn’t look convinced. “Good luck with that, bro,” Austin said.

“Thanks, guys. I appreciate the support.”

Austin frowned thoughtfully. “You could get him a skull.”

“What?”

“Well, I doubt the death god’s kid is a flowers-and-chocolates sort of guy. You could try a bouquet of bones.”

“I don’t think giving Nico a bouquet of bones is going to help my chances.

“Aha!” To Will’s horror, Kayla was grinning. “So you admit you have a thing for him.”

Will felt blood rush to his cheeks. “ANYWAY, so much is changing at camp, huh? A kid came back from the dead last week, we found our Roman siblings, and Kayla hooked up with a hot Mercury guy…”

Will dodged the olive his sister flicked at him.


	2. NICO

II.

NICO

 

Nico still wasn’t used to having a group of rowdy teenagers eating at his table with him.

It had started the morning after the Romans left, when a tray clattered down beside Nico’s plate. Jason announced that it wasn’t fair he had to sit at the Zeus table all by himself while Piper was having a good time with her siblings. And anyway, what was the point of him and Nico both eating alone when they could be keeping each other company?

Percy spent all of breakfast casting them wounded glances from the Poseidon table. At lunch, he sat down across from Nico and Jason, demanding to know why he hadn’t been invited.

Piper joined them at dinner. Annabeth, seeing that not even Mr. D had bothered to do more than glare in their general direction, soon followed.

Then, of course, Leo had crash-landed a bronze dragon into the lake and emerged, soaking wet and very much alive, with a beautiful goddess at his side. The guy had always loved being the centre of attention.

Piper and Jason hadn’t let him out of their sight since. And since Calypso, still overwhelmed by the new world around her, refused to go anywhere without Leo or Chiron, she had joined the party at the Hades table.

Two weeks later Nico had accepted that friendly shouting, eating contests, and blue cookies thrown across the table were part of his new everyday reality.

An onion ring flew across the table, hitting Nico squarely in the ear. He flinched. His hand went automatically to his hip but his sword was back in his cabin. He gave Percy his best death glare instead.

“Sorry!” Percy yelped. “I was aiming for Leo!”

Leo was trying to eat an onion ring that hung off the tip of his nose. Another ring hung over his left ear. Nico felt bad for Calypso, who looked completely lost.

“Your aim is terrible,” Nico told Percy. “Are you sure you should be trusted with a bow?”

“Leo!”

“I’m sorry!”

Every head at the table turned to look at Leo, and then at Piper across from him, leaping backward off the bench to escape the puddle of Coke pouring from her overturned can.

Leo and Jason ran for napkins as everyone else shuffled over to avoid the mess. In the chaos, Calypso shifted over so that she was sitting across from Nico, hands folded in her lap. Nico smiled at her in what he hoped was a reassuring way. Calypso smiled back.

“How have you been finding the modern world?” Nico asked her quietly.

“It’s…very different,” she replied, just as quiet.  

Nico nodded. “It must be really hard to adjust. My sister spent about seventy years in the Underworld before she came back. She had a really hard time at first. Things were so different, even in less than a century.”

“Hazel, right? Leo told me a bit about her.”

“Yeah. Next time she comes to visit, I’ll introduce you two. I know she really wants to meet you.”

Calypso smiled. “Thank you. I’d like to meet her, too.” She picked up a fig from her plate and started peeling it, slowly and carefully. “It feels like everything moves so fast now. Every time I blink something has changed. Ogygia was timeless. Millennia passed, but every day was just like the last.”

“I know what you mean.”

Calypso looked startled.

“I—I’m not from this time, either,” Nico explained. “I spent seventy years in this place called the Lotus Hotel. I was ten years old when my dad hid me there, and ten years old when I came out. It felt like I’d only been there a couple months, but everything had changed.”

Calypso nodded gravely. “I have heard stories of the Lotus Eaters. I did not know they were still…operating.”

“Nothing really disappears,” Nico said. “It goes away for a time, and then it comes back, pretending to be something else.”

Calypso stared down at her fig. In the lengthening silence, Nico went back to his burger. He tore off a corner of his bun and popped it in his mouth. He was almost grateful when Leo appeared behind Calypso, wrapping his arms around her and resting his chin on the top of her head. Calypso tilted her head up and smiled. Leo kissed her forehead and Nico looked down at the ground.

“So, when are you going to ask Will Solace to join us?”

Nico looked up into Jason’s smiling face. “You have something sticky on your chin.”

“Avoiding the question.”

“Why would I invite the Apollo cabin’s head counsellor to come eat at the Hades table?”

“Piper and Annabeth are here.”

Nico pretended to miss the insinuation. “Don’t you think that’s enough head counsellors we’ve brought over to the Dark Side?”

Jason laughed and adjusted his glasses. “Fine, have it your way. But he’s been making puppy eyes at you this whole time. I think he really wants you to invite him over.”

Nico resisted the urge to turn and look for Will. “He’s probably just wondering why your hair looks so weird today.”

Jason glared. “I’m not falling for that.”

Nico shrugged and picked off another piece of his bun.

  
  


That night the Apollo cabin held a sing-along. Campers brought blankets and marshmallows and crowded around the campfire. Nico excused himself from the Seven after dinner. He lagged behind, too tired for his friends’ boisterous company but not wanting to be alone just yet. In the end, he took a seat as far from the campfire as he could manage and decided to watch the sing-along from the shadows. Will and his siblings had gotten an impressive blaze going. Nico was pretty sure almost everyone from Camp Half-Blood—campers, satyrs, and a good number of dryads on top—had showed up to join the fun. Something had changed in camp, after the war. Celebrations were louder, and disagreements forgiven more quickly. Everyone was grieving lost friends, but the grief only hardened Camp Half-Blood’s determination to enjoy life while it lasted.

Nico sensed someone behind him in the dark, stiffened, and then forced the tension out of his body when he realized who had tried to sneak up on him. “You can stop lurking, Jackson.”

“Sorry. I wasn’t trying to sneak up on you.”

“What do you want?”

“I dunno, I just wanted to see if you were all right,” Percy mumbled. “Things, uh, things haven’t been easy for you.”

That, Nico thought, was probably the understatement of the year. “Things haven’t been easy for you, either.”

“Well, yeah, but like, going through Tartarus made me realize that—well, you’ve had things pretty rough.”

“You were in Tartarus longer than I was,” Nico pointed out.

“But you were alone.”

“You were almost sacrificed by Gaia.”

“You almost turned yourself into a ghost shadow-traveling across the country.”

“You got your memories wiped.”

“Right back at you, bro. Are we seriously having a competition to see whose life sucked more?”

“I’d win.”

“Yeah.” Percy’s smile dropped. “You would.”

Nico didn’t know how to answer that. The conversation slipped into awkward silence.

After a while, Percy said, “Hey. Uh. We haven’t really talked since…” He faltered.

“Yeah.” Nico kept his tone as flat and neutral as possible.

“So you really…”

“Jackson. What part of “I had a crush on you” was unclear, exactly?”

“Okay, okay. I just wanted to tell you, it’s cool. And, well—I’m sorry for being an asshole.”

“You weren’t—“

“I didn’t think about what you were going through. Like, ever. I underestimated you and took you for granted. In Tartarus—“

“It’s fine. Annabeth already told me.”

“Oh. She told you about Bob?”

“Yeah. She talked to me the day after you guys got out.”

“Oh.” Percy fell silent and looked up at the stars. His next words were so quiet Nico wasn’t sure they were meant for him. “She’s a better person than I am.”

The new silence that stretched between them felt almost comfortable. Nico watched the glow of the campfire. On the very front bench, Will sat with his cabin. A pair of younger campers was wrestling, and Will was struggling valiantly to break it up. There were bits of s’more in his tousled hair. 

“So, just out of curiosity,” Percy said. “If I’m not your type, who is?”

“Jackson!” Nico yelped, mortified by the pitch of his own voice. .

“I’m just asking because you seem pretty attached to a certain Apollo kid I could name.”

“Gods of Olympus, not you too.”

“So it’s true?”

“It’s true that, contrary to all expectations, I actually made a friend. Unbelievable, isn’t it?”

“Oh, come on, don’t be like that.”

Nico shrugged.  “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“You could tell me about the blossoming romance between you and Will Solace!”

Nico winced. That had sounded forced. He wanted to tell Percy to just leave him alone. He didn’t have to try and make up for the past few years by taking a sudden avid interest in Nico’s personal life. But it was probably best to leave that unsaid.

“Hey! Death Boy!”

Will’s shout startled Nico out of his brooding. Percy’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. Will bounded over, waving. His curly blond hair was mussed and puffy, and he was smeared with marshmallow from the top of his head to the hem of his orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt.

“Hey again, Percy,” Will said, sitting down. “How’s it going?”

“Not bad. You?”

“Oh, I’m swell.” Will poked at a marshmallow smear on his shirt.

“You weren’t happy being a human powder puff?” Nico asked him. “Decided you needed to be a s’more too?”

“Absolutely. Anyway, these taste way better than plaster.” Will picked a piece of marshmallow off his shirt, and, to Nico’s horror and Percy’s obvious admiration, popped it in his mouth. His face crinkled. A moment later, he spat the marshmallow onto the ground. “Okay, that was actually pretty gross. Um. Please forget I did that.”

There was a startled pause. Then Nico burst into laughter. Will’s sheepish look became a grin and he started laughing, too. Soon both of them were doubled over and gasping. Through the tears in his eyes, Nico glimpsed Percy shaking his head. He looked a bit stunned.

“I guess I’ll leave you two to it,” he said. He stood up and left to join Annabeth, who was singing campfire songs with the rest of the Seven.

“Your face—was unbelievable,” Nico told Will when he could breathe again.

“Have I levelled up from ‘Powderpuff’?” Will asked.

“I’ll call you Marshmallow from now on,” Nico promised.

“I can live with that.”

Will smiled. Nico smiled back. They sat there in silence, looking at each other in the firelight glow. There was something captivating about Will’s freckles in the golden light. They were strewn across his face like sparks from the campfire in the night sky. Eventually, Will breathed out heavily and looked down. Nico didn’t know what had changed, but his smile was different.

“What is it?”

“I’ve never heard you laugh like that,” Will said quietly.

Shy, Nico realized. He’d never seen Will look shy before.

“Sorry, that was weird,” Will said.

“It’s okay,” Nico said, desperately wishing for a better reply. What could he say? That not a lot of people had heard him laugh? That Will was one of the very few people who could somehow make him feel light enough to float? “You’ve got blackmail material on me, too.”

“I can’t believe the guy who can summon zombies is afraid of needles.”

“I just don’t like being stabbed!”

“You weren’t getting stabbed,  _ someone else _ was getting stabbed!”

“I’ll stab  _ you _ .”

Will’s finger snaked out to poke Nico’s side. Nico snatched it up just as Will landed a poke in Nico’s stomach with his free hand. Nico lunged for Will’s other hand, adjusting his grip so he could twist both Will’s wrists behind his back.

“Ow! Give me my hands back,” Will yelped.

“Nope,” Nico smirked. “You’re not allowed hands anymore.”

“I kind of need hands to be a medic, you know.”

“Yeah?”

Will sighed. “Well, I guess if I had to give my hands to someone, you’d be my first choice.”

Nico wanted to jerk Will off balance and catch him in a kiss. He dropped Will’s hands like coals and elbowed him sharply in the ribs. Will let out an  _ oof _ . “Violence is not always the answer, Death Boy,” he puffed.

Despite himself, Nico smiled.


	3. NICO

III. 

NICO

 

Nico walked back to the Hades cabin in the dark. His mouth was glued into a ridiculous grin. He could still feel the heat of the campfire, like he was wrapped in a blanket of happiness. When was the last time he had felt—carefree?

The warm feeling lasted until he pushed open the cabin door. It fell off its hinges and hit the ground with a bang.

The reality of the cabin renovations, which Nico had somehow managed to forget entirely, hit him like a sledgehammer set to ALMOST MAXIMUM DESTRUCTION.

The cool night breeze blew in through the empty doorway and out through the gaping hole Will had smashed in the cabin’s back wall.

Nico groaned. It was far too dark to do anything about it now. He fumbled towards his bed without bothering to change. Then he remembered that his bed was a pile of dust and coffin splinters. Nico dragged his blanket out of the rubble and threw it on the floor. Burrowing into the folds in search of warmth, he inhaled plaster dust and choked. The blanket prickled with splinters on the cold floor, but Nico had had worse sleeping conditions. Slowly, he coughed himself to sleep.

  
  


It was dark—not the darkness of the Underworld, broken by the drifting grey of souls, nor the darkness of the night, where starlight leaked even through the heaviest clouds and nowhere in the world was left unaffected by the haze of light pollution. This was the darkness of a sealed tomb, a darkness that deadened sight, hearing, and thought. 

He was curled on his side in the foetal position, his cheek pressed against a curved surface, cold and hard. Unglazed clay. His chest was tight, his breathing shallow. Someone was whispering his name. Someone outside the urn. 

His face felt raw with tear-tracks.  _ Waste of water, stupid.  _ He wanted to gasp but the effort only further constricted his lungs.  _ Shallow breaths or you’re going to die.  _ It was a funny thought, though he couldn’t laugh. Son of the death god, and he couldn’t just let himself die—

“ _ Nico! _ ” 

Nico opened his eyes, reaching for his sword. He was panting, breath ragged. The night air was cold on his skin, wet with sweat and tears. It had been a dream. For someone who had so much control over the sleep of others, Nico had almost no control over his own. The thought of his helplessness made him want to scream. 

In the dark—no, the night, nothing could be dark again after that gods-cursed urn—Nico could make out the outline of an upright figure standing in the doorway. It had a lumpy, misshapen upper body perched on two skinny legs. 

“Nico, good, I can barely see—”

“ _ Solace?”  _

“Hi.” The lumpy half of the figure fell to the floor with a soft thump, raising a cloud of dust. “I brought a flashlight,” Will continued in a voice just above a whisper, “but I don’t want to turn it on and lead the harpies here.” 

Nico’s heart was pounding, from the clinging shreds of his nightmare, and from something else he didn’t want to think about. “What are you  _ doing _ here?”

“I couldn’t sleep. I just kept thinking about, like, how I destroyed your cabin and then totally forgot about it and you were probably stuck here in the cold and knowing  _ you _ you wouldn’t have blankets, and what if you got hypothermia, even though I know it’s unlikely, if you’re not wet, but if you  _ did _ , it’d be my fault, and—”

“Marshmallow.” 

“Um. Yeah?”

“I have a blanket.”

“Oh.” 

“You can stop worrying.” 

“I don’t think I actually  _ can _ .”

Nico sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face.  _ I’m not a charity case,  _ he wanted to say. “Okay, fine. Come in before the harpies notice you.” 

Will moved forward, then jerked to a stop with a small yelp. “I think I found the door.” 

“Of course your night vision sucks,” Nico muttered. “Little Miss Sunshine doesn’t belong in the dark.” Nico’s eyes, on the other hand, adjusted fast in the dark. He could make out the outlines of Will’s gangly limbs, the lines of his face, and the rectangle of the door under his feet. 

“Some of us understand that night is for sleeping,” Will whispered back. 

“Don’t move,” Nico ordered. He closed the gap between them and took Will’s shoulder, trying to ignore the little crackle of electricity against his palm. Will just sparked sometimes, and Nico still didn’t know what to make of it. “Okay, now move, but only where I guide you.” 

“Yessir, captain.” 

Nico moved Will off the door and around the worst of the rubble. “Stay here until I get the door back in place.” 

“Can I help?” 

“It’ll be fine.” Nico reached for the far end of the door and lifted it slowly back to its vertical position, grateful that it, at least, was light wood. There was no point in trying to fit it perfectly back into place in the dark, so he left it leaning against the door frame. If Will turned on his flashlight, a little might leak out through the open edges, but Nico figured the risk was negligible. 

“You good?” Will asked. 

“Yeah. I’ll need help covering your hole, though. Do you have a knife?” 

“Swiss Army.” Will reached into his pocket and stopped. “Or...not. I think it’s in my other shorts.” 

“It’s okay,” Nico said. He dug through the rubble for his backpack, pulling out a set of long knives with forward-curving blades. “How well can you see?” 

“Better,” Will said. “I can see where you are.” 

“Great. Take this?” Nico offered Will one of the knives, hilt-first. “Be careful, it’s sharp.”

Will took it and hefted it up and down a couple times. “What exactly is this?” 

“It’s a  _ kopis _ . Silver,” Nico said. “For ceremonies, ritual sacrifices, dark magic sort of stuff. Also, I’m never getting caught unarmed by werewolves ever again.” 

“Cool!” Will said. “I’ve always wanted to be part of an ancient Greek cult.” 

Nico was too tired to laugh, but Will’s tone coaxed a smile out of him. He grabbed Will’s blanket off the floor, sorted out the corners, and handed one to Will. “Welcome, acolyte. Ready to sacrifice a blanket?” 

“Sure.” 

“We really need to cover this hole somehow. Can you see it?” 

“Yeah. My eyes are adjusting. Kind of.” 

“Help me pull the blanket across?” Nico lifted his corner, watching Will do the same. Will’s reach was slightly higher than Nico’s, but the blanket hung down long enough to accommodate the height difference.  

“How does it look, O Great Cult Leader?” 

“It looks good,” Nico said. “On the count of three, stab your  _ kopis _ through the corner of the blanket, right into the wall.” 

“You think the wall’s soft enough?” Will asked. 

“If you could make a hole this big with a hammer, these will be able to stab through it. Also, they’re enchanted.” 

Nico counted to three and plunged his  _ kopis _ into the corner of the blanket, sinking it to the hilt into the wall. He saw Will do the same on the other side of the hole, and decided not to comment on Will’s stabbing technique. The blanket hung down like a curtain over the hole, pinned up by the two ceremonial blades. 

“Let there be light!” Will whispered dramatically and flicked his flashlight on. 

“Ow,” Nico said, squinting. “Too much light.” 

“Are you sure you’re not a vampire?” 

“Really sure. I’d have eaten you by now if I was.” 

“I don’t mean an  _ empousa _ ,” Will said. He moved the flashlight directly under his chin, casting lines of shadow across his face to what he obviously thought was a spooky effect. “I mean, teenage vampire-romance vampires, with super-speed, and stalkerish habits, and, like, brooding good looks, whatever that means.”

“You’re still looking in the wrong place.” Nico turned away from Will and the flashlight and rubbed his eyes. He’d probably slept more than he did most nights, but he felt worse, sore and lightheaded. This was what he got for thinking he could have a good day: nightmares and pain. 

“You okay, Death Boy?” Will asked. He sounded so genuinely concerned that Nico considered telling him the truth, before dismissing the idea. Will didn’t need more excuses to worry about him. 

“Yeah. Just tired.” 

Will was silent just long enough that Nico started to panic. Finally, he said, “I’m really sorry about your bed. Sleeping on the ground can seriously mess up your back.” 

Nico almost laughed. “I’ve slept in way worse places than the floor of my cabin.” 

“I know,” Will said. “But still. How many blankets have you got in here?”

“Two.” 

Will flicked his flashlight over to the pile Nico’s blanket made on the floor, tucked into the corner of two actual, solid walls. “One for sleeping on, one for sleeping under. That’s what my mom used to say when we made blanket forts.” 

Nico just nodded, and turned to dig the second blanket—Hazel’s blanket—out from the remains of the slightly less destroyed bed. When he got it out, he passed it to Will, who had already folded his blanket into a rectangle and sat down on half of it, leaning against the wall. Nico threw Will the second blanket and sat down on the very edge of the makeshift mattress. If Will noticed the space he was leaving between them, he didn’t say anything. 

“How did you manage to get the splinters out so fast?” Nico asked. 

Will smiled and fidgeted with the flashlight held loosely in his fingers. “Lots of experience making beds.” 

Nico tried, and failed, to think of something light and entertaining to say. “Cool.” 

Will yawned enormously and Nico felt a stab of guilt in his stomach. Will should be asleep in his cabin, not out here worrying about  _ him _ . 

“You should sleep,” Nico said, pushing off his corner of blanket. He could sleep somewhere else—the floor on his bomber jacket would be fine—but Will grabbed his hand before he could get up. 

“Don’t you dare—oh.” Will frowned, holding Nico’s hand tightly and looking at him suspiciously. “You don’t feel great.” 

“I’m  _ fine _ ,” Nico snapped. 

“You really think I can’t tell by now when you’re fine and when you’re not?” Will snapped back. “Give me your other hand.” 

“This is humiliating.” 

“Hand. Now.” 

“This was more fun when it was the other way around,” Nico grumbled, letting Will hold his other hand. He looked resolutely at the floor, but he could picture the exact face Will was making when he cursed under his breath. 

“I don’t understand. Why can’t you just stay healed?” Will whined. 

“I’m sorry,” Nico said. 

“It’s not your  _ fault _ .” Will sighed. “Sometimes, I wish I could just—” 

Nico jerked upright. It felt like a wave of warmth had broken over him, starting with his hands and washing through the rest of his body. It faded, leaving a residual prickling all over his skin. He was still tired, but the edge had disappeared from his fatigue, taking with it his nausea and the worst of his aches. Will was staring at their linked hands with wide eyes. 

“Solace,” Nico said slowly. “What did you just do?” 

“I don’t know,” Will said, shaking his head. “I just thought—” A yawn interrupted Will mid-sentence. His head drooped. “I don’t know, but I feel like I just came off a shift right after the war.” 

“I’ll get you a pillow,” Nico said, but Will’s head had dropped onto his shoulder before he finished the word  _ pillow _ . Nico stiffened, extricating his hands. He could feel Will’s life force beside him, as strong as ever, but his consciousness was fuzzy and distant, like a bright sun shrouded in clouds. Nico reached for Will’s flashlight, careful not to knock the other boy’s head off his shoulder, and clicked off the light. 

The semi-darkness was softer on his eyes. Nico noticed his breathing had gone shallow. He slowed it, counting each inhale and exhale to distract from the tickle of Will’s breath on his collarbone. He stared out at the grey shapes of his demolished furniture and tried as hard as he could to think absolutely nothing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I looked Will up on the Riordan wiki to check one thing and...  
> Oh shit.  
> Riordan finally did it.  
> I guess I need to read Trials of Apollo now, don’t I?  
> (Real talk, though, I respect Rick Riordan for consistently trying to improve the presence and portrayal of minorities in his books and not, like, going on Twitter to tell us Nico is gay despite it being no more than subtext in the book and then making a major motion picture for an older audience in which his sexuality remains subtext. Thank you for not doing that, Rick Riordan.)


	4. NICO

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is kind of a weird one.   
> I'll try to get the next one soon-ish.

IV

NICO

 

Will’s nightmares were making Nico itchy. They crowded the glow of Will’s life-force like storm clouds in a clear sky. Every so often, Will twitched and a prickle of energy passed through Nico, leaving goosebumps, the same way a flash of lightning raised the hair on his arms. 

It had been forty minutes and Nico was debating interference. 

On the one hand, any kind of dream travel was a violation of privacy, a serious one. If anyone  _ got _ the need for privacy, Nico figured it was him. But, on the other hand… he didn’t actually have to travel into Will’s dreams to do what he was planning. After all, a trip into Dream using Will as a focal point wasn’t the same as a trip into Will’s dreams. 

Will twitched in his sleep and a small whimper escaped his lips. 

_ You’re completely hopeless,  _ Nico thought, hating how badly Will—his closeness, his breath, his freckled skin, his voice, the grip of his hands— _ affected _ him. Will was in pain. Nico could help. It didn’t even feel like a choice anymore. 

Nico closed his eyes. 

When he opened them, he was standing on a dry mudflat under a brown sky. Deep cracks scored the grey earth under his feet, stretching out in every direction to a featureless horizon. The air was dry, not warm, but not cold. It felt somehow like there was no temperature at all.  

If Nico focused, he could feel the blanket under his palm and the weight of Will’s head on his shoulder. Nico’s body was still in the Hades cabin, and if anyone could see him he would look sound asleep. But his untethered consciousness was standing in a mudflat, fully dressed, holding his Stygian iron sword. He hefted the sword, reassured by its weight, and started walking. 

Time passed, or at least, it felt like it did. It could be hard to tell in Dream. The landscape changed every time Nico entered into it, and he strongly suspected that no demigod—probably, no hypnokinetic of any species—experienced it the same way. 

A recent expansion of Mythomagic had released a Dream-themed deck that Nico had noticed a couple younger campers adding to their collections. It came with three gods, Hypnos, Thanatos, and Phobetor: the  _ oneiroi _ who, according to the cards’ flavor text, emerged each night with their flocks of dreams and nightmares out of gates of horn and ivory.

Nico wasn’t expecting to run into any of the  _ oneiroi _ , unless he was  _ really _ unlucky. Their minions were another story. 

Right after that thought, Nico almost stepped on a body. 

He jumped back, adrenaline spiking him into hyper-awareness as his fighting reflexes kicked into full gear. The body that had appeared almost under his feet was Will, lying on his back with his arms at his sides. His eyes were closed, face peaceful, and even though Nico could feel the life in the dream-Will as clearly as he felt it in the real Will, the dream-Will wasn’t breathing. 

Nico squinted at the empty air right above the dream-Will’s breastbone, almost flinching when, with no warning, _something_ slipped into visibility in less time than it took to blink. A black batlike creature the size of a house cat crouched on Will’s chest, fangs buried in the base of his throat. It saw Nico the moment Nico saw it, lifted its head, and _screeched_. 

Nico swung his sword, slicing through the nightmare and silencing its scream. At his feet, Will inhaled sharply. The bat-shape dissolved into black smoke and raced for the horizon, where Nico could now see two towering white archways. The one on the left stood empty. Black smoke, writhing like the tentacles of some undersea monster, wrapped around the one on the right. 

A black speck appeared in the centre of the right-hand arch, growing larger by the second. Nico planted himself over Will’s sleeping dream-body and raised his sword.  

Hundreds of nightmares burst out of the arch, flapping and screeching like thousands of bats colliding violently in midair. They shot towards Nico, who stood his ground, sword raised over his head. At the last moment, the flock of nightmares swerved around him, wheeling upwards until they hung like a stormcloud over Nico’s head, just out of the reach of his sword. 

“Hail,  _ melas oneiroi _ !” Nico shouted. Almost instantly, the screeching quieted. The only sound was the slap of hundreds of leather wings surrounding Nico. “This sleeper is under my protection. Go back through the ivory gate.” 

Silence. The hairs on the back of Nico’s neck stood on end. He twisted around, swinging his sword. The Stygian iron cut through the nightmare that had tried to dive-bomb him from behind. As the black smoke dissipated, the remaining nightmares hissed. Nico couldn’t be sure if it was anger, fear, or both but he hoped the fear was stronger. “This sleeper is under my protection,” he shouted again. 

_ You cannot dismiss us, mortal.  _ A dry, inhuman voice hissed in Nico’s head, each word sending a stabbing migraine from the back of his skull to his eyes. Nico gritted his teeth and opened up his mind, letting the a hint of his anger and hate seep out to the nightmares.

“I’m not dismissing you. I’m telling you that this sleeper is under my protection. You can go back or I can keep killing you.”

_ We cannot die.  _

“ _ Duh _ ,” Nico snapped. “If anyone knows you don’t go to Hades, it’s me. But you can disintegrate, and I know being cut by Stygian iron  _ hurts _ .” 

_ You cannot protect him forever.  _

For the first time, Nico envied Percy Jackson’s ability to say exactly the most annoying thing in any given situation. These nightmares deserved it. “I don’t care,” he said instead, wishing it were true. “I’m protecting him  _ now _ . Leave if you don’t want to get hurt.” 

The nightmares hissed, this time louder.  _ We will come for you, Nico di Angelo. You cannot destroy us. You cannot be rid of us. You cannot defeat us.  _

Nico laughed, surprising even himself. The nightmares quivered. “You think you scare me? You’ve visited me every hour I slept for the past four years. There’s nothing new you can do to me.” 

This time, three nightmares dove at him at once. Nico spun his sword through them, slicing each neatly in half.  In the seconds it took for their smoky remains to dissipate, the rest of their flock had already taken off. A second later, they passed through the gate and disappeared. Instantly, Nico’s migraine vanished, along with the weight of the presence that had been pressing on his mind. He stepped slowly away from Will’s sleeping form, still scanning the horizon. Just in case. But the mudflat was empty. Will’s chest rose and fell to the steady rhythm of deep breaths.

Suddenly Nico’s awareness of the cabin floor under his cramping legs rushed back. The grey land of Dream blinked out and his sword clattered to the ground beside his hip, just missing the edge of the blanket. Nico went stiff with panic and glanced down at Will, whose head had fallen into his lap. But Will was still sleeping soundly. A small line of drool escaped his open mouth, falling onto the blanket over Nico’s leg.  

_ Gross,  _ Nico thought, and then,  _ Stop being happy about it _ . 

 


	5. WILL

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This...was not up soon. 
> 
> But I'm done school now, which means I'll actually have time to like, live! and write stuff!

V. 

WILL

 

Will’s left arm was warm. His right arm had goosebumps. And it was way, way too dark in his cabin. 

He lifted his head off his pillow, reaching to wipe away the line of escaping drool at the corner of his mouth—and realized his pillow wasn’t a pillow. It was a leg. More precisely, it was a leg attached to Nico di Angelo, now blinking awake and looking at Will with eyes that were black in the near-dark and hazy from sleep. 

Will jerked his head back so quickly he clipped Nico’s chin. 

“Ow,” Nico said. 

“I’m so sorry!” 

The events of last night were piecing themselves together in Will’s mental jigsaw puzzle.  _ Oh my gods _ , he thought.  _ You slept in Nico di Angelo’s cabin. You slept in Nico di Angelo’s cabin  _ on _ Nico di Angelo.  _

“Are you okay?” Nico asked. “You seem...twitchy. Twitchier than usual.” 

Nico’s voice was lower, and quieter, than usual, and scratchy with sleep, and— _ You drooled on Nico di Angelo’s leg,  _ Will’s thoughts interrupted _.  _ “When am I ever twitchy?” 

“Right now?” 

“Do you think the harpies will peck me to death first, or just start eating me alive?” 

Nico looked at him like he’d gone completely insane. Will couldn’t really blame him. 

“I think—” Nico broke off, looking thoughtful. “I think it’s still half an hour before dawn, and I can get you back to your cabin hours before anyone is up. Without the harpies noticing.” 

“Half an hour,” Will said. 

“What?” 

“Half an hour until everyone gets up.” 

Nico stared, expression unreadable. “Your cabin is full of freaks,” he finally said. “It almost makes you make sense.” 

“You  _ wound _ me, Death Boy,” Will insisted. 

“You’ve got enough gauze and bandages to deal with it.” 

“ _ Hey _ ,” Will protested. 

Nico smirked. 

Will grabbed a handful of his blanket and tugged. Instead of knocking Nico over, as he’d hoped, all he managed to do was pull Nico a little closer. 

“Efficient protest,” Nico said. “Full marks for effort.” 

“I want my blanket back. I need it to hide from a mean vampire.” 

“You really don’t look like you have that much blood in you,” Nico said, shifting his weight off Will’s blanket and slowly getting to his feet. “You’d be a snack for a really pathetic vampire.” 

Will snatched his blanket back. “You’re one to talk about undernourishment— _ mmph! _ ” Nico had shoved the blanket into Will’s face. 

“No more doctor talk,” he said. “You got your three days.” 

“We  _ never _ agreed I’d leave you alone after your three days—”

“Clearly.” 

Nico’s sharp tone withered Will’s retort on his lips. Nico’s face was somewhere between regret and panic, like he’d been caught off guard by his vehemence, too. Then, Will realized what being able to see Nico’s expression meant. It was getting lighter. 

“I need to get back before my siblings wake up and notice I’m gone.”

“If it was just your neck, then…” Nico made a face and shrugged. “But I’m not getting kicked out of camp for harboring the world’s clumsiest fugitive.” 

Will tried to gather up the stray corners of his blanket and look heroic. The effect was probably undercut by a terrible bedhead, but he didn’t need to know that. “I think this is when I say something like ‘once more into the breach! If I don’t make it, tell my friends—’”

“Unto.” 

“What?” 

“It’s supposed to be, ‘Once more unto the breach, my friends,’” Nico said. 

Will blinked. “How do you know that?” 

Nico shifted uncomfortably. “I’m not sure,” he muttered. “I think maybe my mother used to quote it.” 

“Oh,” Will said, scrambling for a response that wasn’t  _ this is the first time you’ve said anything about your mom.  _ “Cool.” 

Nico shrugged again. “We’d better get you back.” 

“Yeah,” Will said. “Wish me luck—”

“You won’t need it. I said I’d take you back, Solace,” Nico said, holding out a hand. “Come on.” 

For a second, Will just stared at Nico’s face. There was a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of Nico’s mouth, and a sly quirk to his brows that Will didn’t know if he could get used to, even given the chance. Then his brain caught up with his ears. “ _ No way _ ,” Will said, louder than he’d intended. “Absolutely  _ not— _ ” 

“Do you remember last night?” 

Will faltered. There was something weird in Nico’s voice, or his question. “I—yeah, of course, I—” 

“When did you fall asleep?” 

“Um.” Will remembered stumbling in, putting the blanket up to block the hole, laying blankets down in the corner, talking, checking up on Nico and feeling the darkness… 

“What did you do, Solace?” Nico held his hands out in front of him, palms up. 

“I don’t know.” He remembered holding Nico’s hands, wishing he could just give Nico a break, and then—nothing. A really abrupt nothing. 

“What were you thinking?” Nico demanded. 

“I wasn’t really thinking,” Will said. “I was just, I was so frustrated. Not with you. With how freaking  _ unfair _ it is that I don’t have to worry about dissolving, and you… You just deserve better and I wanted to help.” 

“You passed out after ‘helping,’” Nico said. Will couldn’t even guess what he was thinking. “Here. Feel what you did.” 

Will took Nico’s outstretched hands. Nico’s grip was tight. The son of Hades felt more solid than ever, almost like a normal living person. Will closed his eyes to concentrate. There were still wisps of shadow flickering at the very edges of Nico’s being, but his life was steadier than Will had ever felt it. Then without warning the shadows raced into Nico’s light and into Will, blotting out everything but the feeling of his hands caught in Nico’s vise-like grip. There was no light, no sound, only the sensation of hurtling through a sucking void—

—And then Will stumbled, back hitting a cold wall. 

Nico’s face was inches away from his, lit by the pre-dawn light. Past Nico’s ear Will could see a belt of trees with the Forest behind them, and he realized suddenly that he was standing right outside Cabin Seven. Nico let go of Will’s hands. The hint of a sly smile was back on his lips. 

“This is where I leave you, Sunshine.” Nico stepped back into the shadows and before Will had the chance to answer, he’d already melted into the darkness. 


	6. WILL

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, hello. I'm sorry it's been a while. 
> 
> Also, Apollo is the cabin of Disaster Bisexuals (tm).

VI.

WILL

 

_ “I can’t believe you, _ ” Will whispered with as much feeling as he could into the empty air. “ _ That was so, so stupid and reckless, and _ — _ and it was a freaking power move, Nico di Angelo _ .” It was hard to sound as angry as Will wanted while whispering. He sat down against his cabin’s door frame and buried his face in his blanket. In a corner of his mind, he imagined sprinting back across the grass, bursting into the Hades cabin, and—what? Angrily wrapping Nico up in a blanket burrito and putting him out to soak in the sunlight? “ _ You’re such a pushover, Will _ .”  

“G‘morning, Will.” 

Will jumped a bit, looking up to see nine-year-old Ayesha standing in the doorway, fully dressed. 

“Oh, hi, Ayesha. Sorry, I’ll get out of the way.” Will scrambled up. 

“You weren’t in the way,” Ayesha said. 

“Oh,” Will said. “Well, I should probably get up anyway. There’s a whole day ahead and all.” 

“Kayla’s looking for you,” Ayesha said matter-of-factly. “She wants to know where the Neosporin is.” 

“Oh, Styx!” Will regretted the outburst right away. “Don’t repeat that.”

Ayesha looked at him doubtfully. “I know way worse words, you know.”

Will shrugged. “Well, as long as you didn’t learn them from me.” 

He’d completely forgotten today was the day Argus would be bringing new supplies for the infirmary. He dodged around Ayesha and yanked open the door. “Kayla, I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you!” 

Several of Will’s siblings looked up. None of them was Kayla. 

“She already left,” Ayesha said from behind him. 

“Oh, Styx,” Will said, quietly. 

  
  


Will only stopped for breakfast long enough to stuff a piece of toast in his mouth and glance around. Nico wasn’t anywhere to be seen, but that was to be expected. Unless someone went to bother him, he usually got up past noon. He had probably gone back to sleep. Or he could be lying in a pool of his own shadows, slowly fading away into nothingness—Will cut off his thoughts. His brain seriously needed to cut the melodrama. Nico was  _ stupid _ , and probably needlessly tired, but that was all. He’d carried two people and a giant statue across the world; he wasn’t going to die from a gallant— _ stupid _ —stunt. 

Will jogged over to the Big House. He hoped inventory would give him something to focus on, something that had nothing to do with Nico. Will wasn’t entirely sure he liked how easily distracted he’d been, lately. Even if his distraction was worrying away at the riddle that was Nico di Angelo, and nothing with Nico in it could be wholly bad to Will. 

 

 

“Twenty rolls of tensor bandage,” Will told Kayla, who jotted down a note in the inventory list. He passed the bandages over to another camper just as Argus walked in from outside, balancing a new stack of packages. Will jumped up to take a box off the top, almost dropping the object perched on top of it. Argus had balanced a large sheathed blade on the very top of the stack. 

“New bone saw!” Will exclaimed, putting his box down to examine the blade. He resisted the urge to prick his thumb. “Thank you so much!” 

Dozens of Argus’s eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. He set the rest of his load down on the infirmary floor and walked out silently. 

Will grinned at Kayla. “It feels like Christmas.” 

“You want an autopsy for Christmas? I could go for that.” 

Will flinched. 

“Wha—?” Kayla broke off. 

Nico di Angelo was standing in the open doorway, leaning casually against the frame.

“It’s lunchtime,” he said. His eyes bored into Will. “Take a break.” 

“Death Boy!” Will blurted. To his horror, his voice cracked. Nico’s stare darkened, probably at the nickname. “What are you doing here?” It came out as a series of questions:  _ What? Are you? Doing? Here?  _

But Nico just shrugged. “You coming for lunch or not?” 

“I’d love to, just as soon as—“ 

“That’s what I thought.” Nico leaned away from the wall, reaching into his jacket. A moment later, a wrapped package landed at Will’s feet. Nico turned away. 

“Hold on—“ 

Will leaned out the door, scanning the porch and the lawn, but Nico had just disappeared. 

“Sandwiches,” Kayla said. 

Will turned around. “What?” 

“He brought you sandwiches.”

 

Will and Kayla ate out on the porch. Kayla had waited until Will had swallowed a bite of his sandwich before giving one a try, because, as she put it, “who knows, what if they’re cursed?” 

Will ate his first sandwich in silence, lost in thought. It was way too good to be from the camp store, which meant Nico must have found some way to sneak food from the pavilion, which Will hadn’t even realized was possible. He knew he wasn’t being very good company, but fortunately, Kayla seemed okay with it. 

Had Nico read his mind? Had he known Will had just wanted reassurance Nico wasn’t dying again? But he’d disappeared like he was  _ flaunting _ the fact he was shadow-travelling again. 

Will reached for his second sandwich. 

“Maybe I was wrong,” Kayla said. “Maybe you do have a chance.” 

Will tried to shake off his thoughts. “What do you mean?” 

“I honestly don’t know what Nico di Angelo’s, like, deal is, but I don’t think he’d bring you sandwiches if he didn’t like you, at least a little bit.” 

Will’s sandwich turned tasteless in his mouth and he swallowed his bite heavily. “Um.” 

“You should just ask him!” Kayla bumped her shoulder into Will’s. “Seriously, it sucks to see you this mopey. Like, the whole cabin is noticing.” 

Sure his face was turning red, Will decided to ignore the last part of that and focus on why he couldn’t work up the nerve to  _ just ask _ . The distraction was effective, but not especially helpful, since Will’s mind immediately filled up with worst-case scenarios.  _ Hey, Nico, want to go out with me? What in Hades, Will? Way to ruin a friendship that was starting to go okay.  _

“I don’t even know if he’s, like…” 

“Gay? Bi?” Kayla prompted. 

“Yeah.” 

“You don’t know that he’s  _ not _ , either, though, right?” Kayla pointed out. “He seems like the kind of guy where you wouldn’t know unless he told you.” 

Will groaned. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I wish I had a gaydar.” 

“That’s like, every Apollo kid’s dream,” Kayla said, laughing. “Also, not reliving Dad’s love life.” 

“That’s a dangerous roast,” Will said. “You’re gonna get sunburn as payback.” 

“Only if he’s paying attention! And if he is, well, all I’m saying is that I don’t want the people I date to turn into plants.” 

“I’m not sure if I’m happy or not that I can blame our love lives on genetics.” 

Kayla laughed harder, choking out, “Being a bisexual disaster runs in the family,” and Will had to laugh, too. The sun shone blithely above them, with inattention or with a really good poker face, Will couldn’t guess.  He felt lighter than he had in a while. 

“I need to get him back,” he said. 

Kayla stopped laughing and raised her eyebrows. “Um, good luck with that?” 

“Not Dad,” Will said. “Nico. I wrecked his cabin and ruined his night and in exchange he brought me sandwiches. Really good sandwiches.” 

“Hmm,” Kayla said. “You could—” 

“Don’t say ‘give him a good night’ or anything to do with nights,” Will added quickly.  

“For the record, I was  _ going _ to say, fix his cabin and plan a nice evening, but  _ okay— _ ”

“Oh,” Will said, and then, “ _ oh! _ ” 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much to the people leaving kudos and comments and following and stuff :). It is very validating, and validation is probably a writer's best friend.


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